COLD SPRING, Minn. -- Janell Wesenberger stood on Red River Avenue, behind a group of flag-waving first-graders from St. Boniface Catholic School, as hundreds of police cars and a hearse wended through Cold Spring on Wednesday afternoon, Dec. 5.

Inside the white hearse was the body of police officer Tom Decker, who was gunned down a week earlier as he worked the night shift in his central Minnesota hometown.

Gov. Mark Dayton and more than 2,300 peace officers from across the country and Canada turned out for Decker's 11 a.m. funeral at St. John's Abbey and University Church in nearby Collegeville. Nine hundred people filled auditoriums on the nearby St. John's University campus to watch the funeral over closed-circuit video.

After the funeral, Wesenberger, the students and hundreds more Cold Spring residents lined the downtown thoroughfare as the procession headed to the small St. Nicholas Cemetery south of town. Some held their hands over their hearts, others wiped away tears. Signs proclaiming, "Thank You Tommy" or "God Bless the Decker Family" were common.

"I just think it's important to show your support and be a part of the bigger community," Wesenberger said of standing curbside on a frigid December afternoon. She also said it was good to be among her small-town neighbors after a shooting that has shaken her sense of safety.

"I think people realize it can happen to you in a nice town like this," she said. "It just makes you think differently about the world, a little bit.

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The only lesson people can take from the shooting, said the Rev. Cletus Connors, a neighbor of Decker's who gave the homily at the two-hour funeral service, is that "life is a gift, something very precious, something that each of us must value and cherish."

"We do not know why Thomas was taken at this early age, and probably will never comprehend this part of it from this side of the grave," said Cletus, pastor of St. Boniface Catholic Church in Cold Spring.

According to authorities, Decker, 31, was performing a welfare check with his partner late last Thursday at an apartment above a Main Street tavern when he was ambushed in an alley and killed by two blasts from a 20-gauge shotgun.

Ryan Larson, 34, the subject of the welfare check, was arrested in his apartment an hour later on suspicion of murder but released Tuesday after Stearns County Attorney Janelle Kearns declined to press charges because of lack of evidence.

She said the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension and the Stearns County sheriff's office were continuing to investigate, focusing on locating the weapon that investigators believe was used in the killing.

The casket of slain Cold Spring police officer Tom Decker is brought into the church by an honor guard -- his escorted widow follows behind -- before the funeral Wednesday morning at St. John's Abbey and University Church in Collegeville, Minn. (Pioneer Press: John Doman)

Kearns sat in the back of the church during Decker's funeral, taking communion with mourners and listening as one of Decker's six siblings, brother Eddie Decker, talked lovingly of the officer.

Eddie Decker described his brother as a son who always liked to make jokes; a brother who always gave up what he had for his siblings; a husband who would rather spend time with his wife than tinker in the garage; and a father who thought his four young children were his life.

"He understood what is really important in this life," Eddie Decker said. "He cared for others more than he cared for himself."

Eddie Decker thanked law enforcement officers who came to pay their respects, and he assured everyone that in the last moments of his life, Tom Decker "came face to face with Jesus Christ," who said, "Well done, my good and faithful servant. Well done. Welcome to my father's kingdom."

After the funeral, the long procession moved from Collegeville, through Cold Spring and Richmond, where Decker also patrolled, on its way to St. Nicholas Catholic Cemetery in Luxemburg Township.

Watching the procession just a few blocks from where Decker was shot, Cold Spring native Jon Acheson said that he didn't know Decker personally, but that in a town of 4,000, "everybody knows everybody -- or at least their cousin or uncle," he said. The loss was still palpable.

"Deep down, it's in the bottom of everybody's stomach right now. I think everyone wants to move on because we've had more than one of these incidents happen here," he said, referring to the 2003 Rocori High School shooting that left two students dead and another convicted of their murders.

That no one is in custody for Decker's slaying has everyone talking, he said.

"Hopefully, it all comes out in the end and we find out who did it," he said.

At the small burial ground, law enforcement formed ranks as Decker's flag-draped casket was moved from the hearse to a horse-drawn caisson. Followed by a riderless horse and Cold Spring squad car, the caisson moved past a statue of a crucified Jesus before arriving at the open grave near the cemetery's wrought-iron gate.

As an honor guard prepared to lift the casket, Cold Spring Police Chief Phil Jones stepped out of the squad and, with another officer, helped Decker's wife, Alicia Decker, from the car. Shoulders slumped, she held onto the officers' arms as they led her to the gravesite.

Priests stood over the casket, asking God for comfort and leading mourners in the Lord's Prayer. A bagpiper played "Amazing Grace."

The captain of the honor guard called the thousands of assembled peace officers to attention and ordered three volleys from the seven riflemen lined up on the edge of the graveyard.

Alicia Decker jumped at the first crack of gunfire but she remained still for the next two.

The honor guard folded the flag from the casket and handed it to Jones. He turned it over to Alicia Decker with a long hug.

Two more flags were handed over: one to Decker's parents, John and Rosella, and another to Becky Decker and the children.

With a final sprinkling of holy water on the casket, the formal, daylong farewell to Cold Spring's slain officer was over.

Now the community waits to find out who made all the mourning necessary.

John Brewer can be reached at 651-228-2093.

Three people stand along County Road 21 and offer their support as a procession of law enforcement vehicles goes by on its way to St. Nicholas Catholic Cemetery in Luxemburg, Minn., where Cold Spring police officer Tom Decker was buried Wednesday. (Pioneer Press: Jean Pieri)